What is my magazine?

For my music magazine I wanted to create something that was different to other music magazines. I wanted to try and create one which would be able to be sold with very current and big magazines like Q and NME but at the same time have an alternative feel to it. To try and complete this feel and ideology for my music magazine I researched both these topical sides of music magazines. I looked at NME which is a very mainstream music magazine which reports weekly on the goings on of the mainstream music world. One of the parts of NME that influenced me was how they did not conform to one type of music. They report on all the different mainstream popular music which most of the big music magazines do not bother doing. Q magazine is another mainstream magazine which I was influenced by. I like the way that they lay out their magazine. It is very simple, with very straight lines and simple shapes separating the text well from another. I used part of this influence in my music magazine with all of the produced pieces. An Example of this would be my front cover.



As you can see if you look closely, there are lines separating up the page up. I like this effect as it helps to give a much stronger awareness of the space that the magazine has. It also helps to focus any potential buyers attention on the different parts of the magazine. I then focused on looking at alternative music magazines. One that I came across was i-D magazine. I liked this magazine as it was quite well known with in the alternative music magazine world and it had a very special and different look other music magazines have.




the second of my two alternative music magazines was Blag. I found Blag in Borders bookshop as I was browsing through looking for potential ideas for my magazine. The photography caught my attention especially as it looked very different to any other magazine on the shelf. This kind of front cover is a look I was aiming for as it grabs the readers attention - like it did mine. I feel that if my music magazine was published it would be a middle point between the massive commercial market of the big music magazines and then the little, alternative and interesting music magazines . I think that aiming for this gap in market would work as I cannot find another music magazine that conforms to this area of the market. I think that this helps my magazine challenge the form and conventions of normal music magazines.